New $228-million High Prairie hospital might be the last rural Alberta sees for awhileBack to video

Down the hall, the gleaming new maternity ward has a special warming machine, a set of shiny new cribs and even ankle bracelets that trigger an alarm when a baby is taken from the ward without permission.

There’s just one problem: The facility has no babies.

Despite the hospital’s considerable price tag, a sunny 16,000-square-metre floor plan and a host of modern medical conveniences, the town of 2,600 people in northern Alberta remains on the hunt for qualified staff needed to ramp up services.

From the quiet maternity ward to the unused examination rooms to the surgery suite that has yet to hold a single operation, the High Prairie hospital is a prime illustration of the struggle rural communities often face around health care — while also representing an ongoing conundrum for the cash-strapped government.

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Even if you build it, the doctors, nurses and patients won’t necessarily come.

“Over the years, this community has had some of the services that we are ramping back up to, and they have lost them through loss of staff or the age of the (former) building,” said Roxanne Stuckless, director of clinical operations for Alberta Health Services’ Area 6, which includes High Prairie.

“With this new facility, we have the ability to recruit and bring back some of those services.

“You may look and say we have a lot of space and things aren’t happening yet, but we have to build for the future.”

Roxanne Stuckless (director, north zone clinical operations for High Prairie, Alberta Health Services) at the High Prairie Health Complex on June 16, 2017.Larry Wong/Postmedia

Stuckless and other health leaders insist the recruitment of obstetrics staff is just a matter of time, and that moms will soon be giving birth in High Prairie again.

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Day surgeries and other health care are also touted to expand over time, as AHS works out plans for how to split up services for the region among facilities in Slave Lake, High Prairie and McLennan.

The shiny new infrastructure should help with the hirings, though some medical professionals may be more attracted by the model of integrated care the High Prairie facility offers, said Dr. Kevin Worry, AHS medical director for the north zone.

The hospital includes a 67-bed continuing care centre, a primary care clinic and space to co-ordinate community health services such as home care and mental health. Patients, in effect, have a convenient “one-stop shop” for all their health needs that also provides some cost-efficiencies for the system.

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“Certainly one of the perks to having co-location is we have an opportunity for patients to easily move from one location to another,” Worry said. “For people who come to the emergency department that don’t actually need emergency care, we can get them very quickly into primary care or community care.”

In this respect, health leaders acknowledge the High Prairie health complex is a dream facility that several other communities with aging hospitals — including Whitecourt, Wainwright and Cardston — would love to have.

It may be the last such project rural Alberta sees for awhile, given the financial state of the debt- and deficit-ridden provincial government.

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The latest provincial capital plan features no new money for any significant rural health project, with the government choosing instead to focus its available funds on the Calgary cancer centre and a suburban hospital for Edmonton.

The CT Scan room at the High Prairie Health Complex on June 16, 2017.Larry Wong/Postmedia

Exacerbating the funding struggles is that modern health infrastructure, even at the scale of a rural hospital, has become increasingly complex and expensive.

In the case of High Prairie, the project was pegged to be completed in 2011 at a cost of $44 million, but then went through several delays and cost increases that caused the final bill to be five times the initial forecast.

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But beyond the money shortages, the province has also been pushing health system changes to get more patients treated at home or in community settings rather than having them go to the hospital.

In that context, it may not be wise to drop $200 million apiece for a bunch of new rural hospitals.

Worry said AHS is increasingly exploring different, custom-made solutions for each community. While some towns with a badly dilapidated hospital will absolutely need a new facility at some point, there are other communities where a renovation or an addition to the local health centre might make more sense.

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“There are a lot of different ways you can manage it and I don’t think there is one cookie cutter approach that should be taken,” he said.

Still, for towns that just witnessed the government cutting ribbons on new health palaces in High Prairie and Edson, proposing a smaller-scale renovation or addition is a difficult conversation to have.

“Often when I speak to folks in facilities throughout rural Alberta, they say they want to have a full-scale hospital,” Health Minister Sarah Hoffman said. “I think for a lot of people, that’s the first thing you think of when you think of health care.”

However, Hoffman said there have been some recent successes in convincing communities to accept a different vision.

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“When we continue to have those conversations and work through what is it you are hoping to achieve rather than what facility you want to have, I think you get a lot further,” Hoffman said.

The government is also continuing to work on plans for a “template” of a rural health facility that could be constructed in any community in the province. In theory, using the same basic, scalable design will lower construction costs and get facilities built faster.

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The template project was supposed to be complete by now, but Hoffman said it turned out to be more challenging than anticipated. She said she now hopes to reveal the work by the end of the year.

The Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties did not respond to requests for comment.

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